THE STORY OF FOTW

by Giuseppe Bottasini

WHY I CREATED FOTW

My interest in flags has always been as a hobbyist and never as a
scholar. Even today, though I feel that my vexillological knowledge is above
average, it is still significantly inferior to that of the typical FOTW
subscriber.

I created FOTW because I dreamed of having available a large, full-color
flag book, always up-to-date and containing those local or non-official flags
that books normally don't show. I was particularly fascinated by new flags
that appeared fleetingly on television or in newspapers. In the years in
which FOTW was born, this interest was greatly enhanced by the dissolution of
the Soviet bloc and the birth or rebirth of many new states.

HOW I CREATED FOTW

I am a computer engineer and have been interested in the Internet ever
since it became available in Italy outside academic circles. The Internet
seemed to me the right path for fulfilling my vexillological dream: a means
for exchanging flag information in real time with people all over the world.

FOTW used technologies as they became available: First a mailing list
that I managed by hand for about ten people, then an automated mailing list,
and finally a Web site. For the chronological history of FOTW, see
fotwhist.html.

WHY FOTW BECAME SUCCESSFUL

When I started the mailing list there were groups on the Internet
interested in almost every area except vexillology (in the first months we
discussed affiliating ourselves with the newsgroup rec.heraldry). FOTW filled
that void: it appears that my dream was shared by many other people in the
world.

From the first, I made a rule that everything on FOTW would be free: No
one has ever paid for viewing FOTW pages, even on CD-ROM, no one has ever
been paid for his or her contributions to FOTW, and we have never accepted
advertisements on our pages. This rule has motivated people to donate their
work generously to FOTW, giving everyone the possibility to make known to the
world their own modest or extensive vexillological research.

The third reason for the success of FOTW was the idea to transform the
electronic messages into Web pages my means of laborious editing: the mailing
list has become the fuel feeding the site. The real miracle of FOTW is the
birth of a worldwide editorial staff composed of people who never meet and
who dedicate freely tens of hours a year in order to extract from the mine of
messages the gold of a new fact, an interesting one, or simply a peculiar one.

WHAT I WOULD CHANGE

I am fully satisfied with FOTW: I realized my dream and I have given my
small contribution to the community of people connected to the Internet. I am
no longer the Director of FOTW, and hence I think that it is up to the new
Director, Rob Raeside, to point out possible improvements. I take this
opportunity to thank Rob for having made possible the continuation of FOTW
when I could no longer dedicate myself to my creation.

At times visitors to the site complain about the publication of inexact
or outright mistaken information. FOTW is one-half book and one-half
newspaper: As a book it has to report only information that is verified and
certain; as a newspaper it can also report news not yet completely verified.
I think of FOTW as a research project – based on verified data but able to
experiment with ideas that are new and even wrong.

I don't think that the editorial office can do more than what it is
already doing. Perhaps it might be useful to add a "scientific committee"
that would control – at its own discretion or at the request of site
visitors – the content of FOTW pages and then suggest changes to the
editorial staff. However, the best guarantee of accuracy is the great number
of visitors and the ease with which dissatisfied visitors can communicate
with the editors.

My unfulfilled dream is the creation of a formal language for describing
flags that would allow the development of software for identifying and
cataloguing flags. I had started to prepare some language, but I never had
the time to work on it. If someone wanted to continue this dream ...